So I’m not particularly athletically inclined. I tried to play soccer when I was like, five, but I hated running. I danced for six years, ran cross-country and started playing tennis while in college.
But I never played any of the team sports I loved as a kid, and there was really only one professional sport that had my heart.
Coincidentally, it was one I was not invited to play—at least not one I felt it realistic to aspire to.
When I was 10, I visited Fenway Park for the first time with my family. That trip to Boston solidified my belief that the Red Sox was the very best sports team in the world, and also that I could go ahead and opt out of all other sports fandoms, because why bother?
Baseball was far superior.
I do, however, remember asking my father why women didn’t play baseball, finding out that they
didn’t (professionally), and the intense feeling of disappointment that followed.
But as I reached adolescence, I realized that at least there were other professional sports I felt female athletes were absolutely dominating.
I began watching tennis, which, in my opinion, is the most egalitarian professional sport, since so many female tennis players are lauded for their supreme abilities.
For a time, I could forget about the fact that my favorite professional sport had an absence of women, because SERENA AND VENUS WILLIAMS, obviously.
But when I got accepted to Georgia State, I was welcomed into a university culture where male sports dominate discussion, primarily football.
I had known this day would come. I was never a college sports fan, because as a kid, as far as I could tell, female college athletes rarely got screen time.
At least, they never got as much as college football, the namesake of college sports.
Men, men, men. Where were the female athletes on ESPN? It’s almost like by the time you get to college, you begin to realize how few women athletes are emphasized in the greater sports culture in America.
In fact, it reminds me of that question that plagued my childhood mind—“Why don’t women play baseball?”
Universities need to put more focus on women’s sports. This is the time in our lives where student athletes prepare for the next chapter in their lives, and this may include going pro for some.
Take Abigail Tere-Apisah for example: she’s the winningest women’s tennis player in her program’s history. She plans on trying to play professionally after graduation.
It is one of my greatest hopes to see her out there at the U.S. Open one day, kicking ass.
If you’re a sports fan of any kind, or one like me, where you focus most of your energy into the sports you love most, you should get out there and support our female athletes.
I recently had a discussion with male journalists who believed that it’s a “financial reality” that universities make money off of basketball and football, not women’s sports.
Therefore, I conclude that women should go out and support female athletes specifically, because that is what men are doing for male athletes.
I believe that if universities take note that fans are going to female sporting events, and fans will have changed the face of sports culture.
